Health Blog

Can your health impact your financial wellbeing?

You may not think about how your health and healthcare decisions affect your financial wellbeing beyond the issues of how much you pay for health insurance and what you have to pay out of your own pocket for your deductible and copays. But there are a number of other ways that your health can have an impact on your finances:

If you are diagnosed with a chronic condition such as heart disease, diabetes, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or a life-threatening illness or injury, you could face continuing high out-of-pocket costs for treatment and medications to manage your condition.

How to take control of your health and protect your financial wellbeing

There are three key factors that can help you gain more control over your health and healthcare decisions:

Information and support to make informed medical decisions: Making medical decisions can be a complex process. If you’re diagnosed with a serious illness, your first step should be to seek a second opinion on your diagnosis and the recommended treatment approach. You also need objective, evidence-based information on the condition you face, available treatment options, and which physicians and hospitals have the experience and training needed to deliver the most effective and appropriate care. There are several ways you can gather the information you need to make an informed decision, including talking with your physician, working with a case manager, and enlisting the support of a personal health advisor.

Knowing and managing your personal health risks. When you know your family and personal health history, you can take the needed steps to understand and manage the health risks you may face. You and your physician can build a proactive health risk management plan, which can lower your risk of developing preventable health problems such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and back pain. It may also help you catch serious illnesses at their earliest stages when they are often more treatable through a personalized plan of appropriate screenings.

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The firm is now allowing its entire adviser force to refer clients to PinnacleCare, which also created a new elder-care assessment… Many advisers feel that dealing with elder-care issues isn’t their responsibility. But as clients age, “you’re going to be doing this whether you want to or not.”

In a time of serious illness, these advocates can help research new treatments that doctors may not know a lot about, cut through the medical bureaucracy, and perhaps help frame medical decisions more objectively than stressed out patients and their family members. Advocates are not just there to help you heal but also to keep you healthy.

— Anne Tergesen, “Your Guide to the Medical Maze”

Consider hiring a private patient advocate… It could help get you the care you need.

— Judy Foreman, “For when a doctor and a nurse just aren’t enough”

“Pinnacle provided me with a name and with research that said, ‘here’s how other people are going it, and here’s who has the most long-term survivors, and here are their stories.’ What I got from that was hope. Not a bad return on investment.”

— Gregory Taggart, “Deluxe Health Care”

“I always thought the medical staff would return phone calls, answer questions and discuss treatment plans and options. I was wrong.” So the family turned to…PinnacleCare for help. Within one day, a doctor on the company’s staff reviewed her mother’s medical records and set up a conference call with a neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins and a neurologist from Rush University Medical Center, who agreed to take on the case. “We needed someone on our side.”